That Friday Afternoon
by MorriganFearn
Summary: Tohsaka Sakura is just trying to find some normality, now that she's living on her own. But a beautiful stranger walks into her coffee shop, bringing friendship, a sympathetic ear, and possibly more. A Grail-less universe, with no character death.


Happy (Late) Birthday, Fairywine! MF has failed you. :'(. But... really cute Sakura/Rider, budding friendship?

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**That Friday Afternoon**

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The cafe is air conditioned, and that makes it a small piece of heaven, now that August has hit Fuyuki and the sunlight radiates from the streets like the smile of a particularly evil child. Tohsaka Sakura is glad that there is some relief avilable, as she exits the small back bathroom, wiping her forehead. Now dressed in her work clothes, and wishing that the manager did not insist on long black styles simply because it makes her feel hot even with the air conditioning, she takes her place behind the counter, and smiles at the customers coming in.

All her regulars stop by. Sakura dances the dance of smiles and firmness, telling the awkward English teacher that he must buy another cup of coffee for each hour he uses the WiFi. His eagerness to apologize each day, offering help on any exam study she needs, and habit of tipping like a king make her feel a little bad for insisting, but Velvet-sensei counters that he always intends to buy the coffee, he just needs someone to remind him. Then he'll start speaking about chemistry, or physics, or whatever has his interest—lately it has been folklore and oral history—and his coffee will grow cold.

All of her manager's friends—some mysteriously connected to Taiga-sensei—come in. Sakura smiles her recognition, and admires the latest tattoos, or the newest expensive watch. They are all fancy suits with the smell of danger hiding behind slicked back hair, but Sakura doesn't worry. She works for the cafe, and the cafe is theirs, so—as the tough guy with the most terrible taste in tropical prints, and the ugliest habit of coming in with new gunshot or knife wounds barely healed has told her—she is under their protection. The ones who know Taiga-sensei personally are speaking about university entrance exams now, and telling her that she has it in her to go far next year.

Tough guy struts today, his grin crooked as ever, and a big bruise under his eye. He's teasing another one of Sakura's regulars about her new onii-san, which surprises Sakura a little. Rin does not look up to anyone, as far as Sakura knows.

Rin always buys one slice of strawberry cake, cool and shiny with the sweet glaze that keeps the rose petals that the manager carves out of strawberry slices in place on the top. Sakura makes certain that she has the late Friday afternoon shift, just so she can see her sempai buying a slice of cake before cram school. Once they smiled at each other when exchanging cake for cash. But they don't speak. There is so much to say, and yet while Sakura is at work is not the time, nor the place.

This late afternoon is no different. Their eyes meet, then look away, commerce is enacted, and Sakura smiles the smile of a good sales girl. Rin does say good bye. The words float away from her as she strides to the door, and Sakura calls out as well, but there is nothing special in the farewell. Just a shop girl and a valued customer who will not speak about family.

Still, Sakura watches Rin head toward the bus stop through the cafe's picture window. When Rin steps out of sight, Sakura's eyes wander, selecting her regulars on the street, and wondering as always about their lives. These people don't stop at the cafe, ever, but they walk past at certain points in her shifts, and she recognizes them. There's the Christian priest who always stops at the Thai curry place. He's a bit of a legend on the street, and the owner of the Chinese restaurant three doors down is apparently convinced that he's possessed by a devil.

There's the punk who dyes his hair blond, and always stops at the corner for a cigarette or a swig from a wine bottle. At first, Sakura thought he was a high schooler, or maybe a first year university student, but he hasn't seemed to age in the two years that Sakura has been working at the cafe, and now she just thinks he never grew out of his delinquent stage when he was younger, but all of his friends have moved on.

At first she was scared of him, because fighting and violence always seemed to follow in his wake, but now either he is too disenchanted with the world to bother anymore, or she is strong enough not to notice bleeding knuckles and self satisfaction through the distance of a glass window and two lanes of traffic. Life must be lonely for him, and she hopes he either grows up, or finds new friends some day.

He grinds his cigarette under his boot heel—snakeskin patterned plastic today, Sakura thinks. Well, it sort of matches the fake leather of his pants. If anything, Punk's taste in clothing is worse than Tough Guy's—and walks away, nearly bumping into Mrs. Kiritsugu and her daughter. Sometimes Sakura dreams that they stop and chat. For no good reason; delinquents fading from their glory years probably have little in common with famous scientists and their families, except that Sakura knows every one involved by sight. It would be nice if everyone cared about one another, and Mrs. Kiritsugu is kindness wrapped in a hug.

Across the way, the stock boy at the wine store waves to the pale little girl trotting at her mother's side. Little Ilya whirls to wave back, grinning, but today is not a day when either mother or daughter will stop and talk. Sakura has already seen the black shadow of the Kiritsugu bodyguard keeping a careful distance, which usually means they are on business.

The door opens, and a warm wall of sticky heat rolls in ahead of a new customer. Like Tough Guy, and many in this growing neighborhood of Fuyuki, she is foreign. Sakura looks up and up and up, shocked by the strength and beauty of the lady looking at the tables over the rims of her glasses.

"Welcome to our shop," Sakura calls, before wondering if she should speak in English instead.

The lady advances on the counter, a calm shadow against the dying afternoon light. "Hello?" Her Japanese is almost perfect, and Sakura feels embarrassed for thinking that just because the woman is foreign she might need assistance. "I am looking for a friend of an acquaintance. Mr. Velvet."

"Oh, but," Sakura looks at the table. Old coffee rests next to a laptop. He must have gone to the restroom. She colors a little. "He was here. I'm sure he will come back. Look, his laptop is right there. Can I help you with anything while you wait?"

"Yes. May I have some coffee, please? If it is not too much trouble?" the lady's speech is soft and polite. Sakura wishes that she sounded half as elegant. For all her size, this woman must be quite gentle—perhaps because she knows that she could be a force to be reckoned with, if she chose, and she chooses not to be.

The Sakura goes again, the young woman scolds herself, as she realizes her admiration is preventing her from taking the order. "Oh! Of course, ma'am! One coffee! Black?"

"Black, um, with one of those, ah, I'm sorry, it's a little," the woman is waving at the small currant tortes in the display case, "cookies, please. The small ones with fruit."

She must not know the words. Sakura beams as she selects the roundest, prettiest one with the best balance of berries. "Currant tortes. This design is popular in Germany, according to our manager. We get a lot of travelers here who love them."

Just as she turns to put the torte on the counter with the coffee cup, the door opens again. Over her new customer's shoulder, Sakura sees white hair. No. Please no. The elegant lady is walking to the table, and the man in the doorway starts forward. Sakura whirls, pretending she hasn't seen him, pretending that she has work in the back—she does have work in the back. She is researching new baking methods from Europe. Baking is much more complicated than other kinds of cooking, but so rewarding—

"Please, wait, Sakura," the voice cracks like a desert under the hot sun.

Sakura closes her eyes against tears. She is a horrible person for trying to avoid this. Slowly, with a force of will that could halt a glacier or force the sun to set in the south, Sakura turns toward the counter. The man standing there, wheezing from having walked too fast, is a stranger. Oh, she has seen his cadaver before. Once, she could even call him uncle with a light heart. Now, though, over the past two years, despair has wasted him. Even though she knows disease was at the heart of the change, and his solutions for managing the pain only destroyed what little was left unravaged, she still thinks of him as the familiar of despair, a ragged avatar for a monster.

Sakura wants to cry and throw her arms around him, but he might break. She wants to order him out of the shop, to yell that he shouldn't ever come here, particularly not when Rin has only left minutes ago. She stands instead, trying to find a place inside herself that is unmovable, and cannot hurt him any more, or allow herself to be hurt by his condition.

"Uncle Kariya. You look better today," somewhere, Sakura finds a soft smile, and it becomes her armor.

He does, actually. She cannot meet the sunken dull eyes, but she can see some repair has happened, or the decline has stabilized. The slack skin hanging from his bones has a bit of padding under it now. His hair is almost fully regrown. What was once black is not even gray any more, but he has hair again. She thinks that the scars from his last fight with his inner tormentors have healed so much that she can barely see them.

He stands before her, almost unbowed. It's the closest to her good brave uncle that he has looked in years. But that only makes her fear more that the unexpected yelling and the unpredictable swing into destruction is just around the corner. Please don't hurt yourself again, she wants to say.

"You too, Sakura," he mutters, and he cannot meet her eyes either. "Has—I was told you got the money. He did deliver the money for your rent last month, right?"

"Yes," he had. The large roommate who had tied himself to her uncle's madness and refuses to listen to any protestations on Sakura's part that she does not need whatever little Kariya manages to scrape together for her little apartment over Taiga's garden shed. "I have some extra, actually, from this job. I didn't need it on school fees this term. It's enough for you to get your own place. Or bring the visiting nurse back."

"No, no, I'm fine. He looks after me."

Sakura had run away from the single room apartment months ago when Kariya started screaming at phantoms only he could see. She has kept her visits through the dreams of boiling mud, the scorpions Kariya swore were crawling on the walls, and the scarabs wriggling under his skin before, but that night his roommate had been in. In her nightmares, Sakura can still hear the crack of his roommate's hand against Kariya's hollow cheek.

"I'm glad to hear—"

But Kariya begins to rock back and forth, skellatal hands wringing as he whispers something like "No. No. No. No," to the tempo of a terrified heart.

The lady is back at the counter. She smiles kindly at Sakura, before turning to the wrecked Kariya, sliding her glasses down her nose. "Sir? I think your friend is looking for you."

She points at the world outside the window, where a man who almost reaches her height stands waiting. He is a grim, sad finality that makes Sakura wish for the golden haired delinquent and his violence every time she sees him.

Kariya looks at the window, and the rocking slows, though nothing can stop his mouth once he starts. He glances back at the lady, and something that should be a grin slashes across his face. "No. No. Yes. I should go now. I'm sorry, Sakura."

He had screamed that, too, as she left three months ago. He always says he is sorry.

"Me, too, Uncle Kariya," Sakura murmurs in turn.

The lady guides him from the shop, and Sakura is ashamed at how glad she is for the reprieve. She leans on the counter, and breathes out. She is really a terrible shop girl.

Her light is blocked. "Excuse me. How are you doing?"

Sakura looks up. It is the lady. Her glasses are back on, but Sakura is realizing that in addition to her surprising purple hair—something Sakura had written off as the current fashion in France—she has on colored contacts. It's very striking.

"I am fine."

"I am sure," the lady agrees. "You have a very strong smile. I have—a relative of sorts, who can get like that sometimes. It can be very difficult, but you were so kind. I made sure he got safely to his friend. What can I do for you?"

"Oh nothing," Sakura says swiftly, straightening and turning back into the good shop girl.

But the lady smiles. She is standing so that no one walking outside the cafe can see Sakura. "Please call me Rider. I'm on my university break here, and I thought I would find Mr. Velvet for a friend, but since he isn't returning," she trailed off, and let out a sigh. "It would be nice to sit and chat, rather than have coffee on my own. What would you like to talk about?"

"Ah," Sakura tries to think of all the right things to say to such a straight forward customer. It isn't easy, like it is with the scary people, to imagine herself somewhere else. Rider is there, right in front of Sakura, and refuses to be anything else other than who she is. "Wh—where are you from, if you're on university break?"

"Well, I'm living in Tokyo right now—well, a little outside it, but that's where my university is. I'm majoring in international relations. But I'm from Greece, originally. How about you?"

"Oh, I've never traveled. I grew up here. My name is," Sakura falters. Would it seem rude not to give her family name, when Rider has already introduced herself? But no! She has a name tag, and every other regular customer uses her name freely. "Please call me Sakura. So! International relations? Are you studying to be a diplomat, or a business woman?"

"Yes, something like that. I want to work with people who are making a difference in the world," Rider's tones are calm and sophisticated, but Sakura wonders if she is actually younger than she looks. It fills Sakura with happiness to hear such idealism from Rider. "So, you've never traveled, not even on your holidays? Where would you plan to go after your university exams? There's some free time for students then."

"Well—I'm not sure, really," Sakura relaxes. This is just like talking to any teacher or sempai. "A lot of people want me to consider university, but, I want to be supporting myself properly. If I got a job in an office as a receptionist, or something useful like that after high school, that would be my dream. I really like it here, of course. I'm working hard to learn my manager's lessons about economy and baking, and I think I could do well here, too. But the neighborhood," she shrugs.

"Tell me about the neighborhood."

Slowly, genetly, Rider asks all of the right questions. Soon Sakura is telling her the story of how scared she was when she first met Tough Guy, and even though that was a misunderstanding, she hasn't found out his name—which is embarassing as he has been calling her Sakura-chan for nearly a year and a half. Rider laughs, and the minutes tick by.

Sometimes they have to stop talking, because customers come in. Sometimes, Sakura is distracted by her regulars passing by the window. When Ayako-sempai waves in, Rider learns about an archery tournament, and Sakura blushes, because a worldly university student who know Greek and Russian and Latin and Japanese can't possibly be interested in her club activities. But Rider is, and even better is interested in the details because she took archery back in highschool in Greece, and although her aim was good, she never really got a feeling for the bows. Sakura sounds like she has a good feel for the sport, even if it doesn't come naturally to her like cooking does.

Soon Sakura knows Rider has two siblings who are very beautiful, and whom she thinks the world of, even if, Rider looks away, she isn't very good at being their sister. Sakura smiles with her, sharing the armor that they both know, thinking of Rin. She understands, she says. Rider nods, she is sure that Sakura does.

Velvet-sensei returns just before closing time, far too many books in his arms. Rider breaks off their conversation with a nod, and waits for the teacher to appologize for running off to the library on such short notice. She speaks a few words to Velvet-sensei. He looks sad, but tells both women it's nothing, really. Just an old friend being foolish again.

He waits for Sakura to end her shift, and lock up as he has every Friday night, but when she leaves the store, Sakura is not surprised to see Rider towering over Velvet-sensei. It is a change in her routine for this single day, but Sakura doesn't mind. She waves good-bye to the wine and spirits store stock boy, as she does every evening. Velvet-sensei is speaking of many things as always—it's the ocean that has grabbed his attention this time—but they walk towards Sakura's four and a half tatami apartment together, a strange band of three.

Fuyuki is not yet ready to shut down, it never does so completely, anyway. Sakura knows tonight as she dreams of the mysterious lives that must exist outside her cafe window, Rider's face will be added to the mix, perhaps curled elegantly under a tree somewhere, a studious expression gracing her features as she concentrates on something important for university. It isn't right, as she should be dreaming of Rider in Tokyo with all of her prestiege, but instead, her imagination has made the graceful woman part of this wakeful city instead.

The next day, when Sakura begins her Saturday morning shift, Rider is there waiting with coffee and another torte. When Sakura goes on her lunch break Rider splits the torte in half, and smiled in pleasure over the rim of her coffee mug, as Sakura tentatively sits at her table.

"I thought you had delievered your message to Velvet-sensei."

"I did."

"Well, you needn't come back today. He's not here on Saturdays."

"No, but I have another friend who is. When did you say that tournament was again? I want to come to it, if I may?"

That Friday afternoon heralded many changes for Sakura.


End file.
